A look at Topps in their first year of their new NBA deal.
I have to admit that I didn't have a ton of nostalgic feelings for Topps basketball cards when their returned to (licensed) cards was imminent. I know a few people posted images of their Steph Curry rookie cards when it became clear that the Fanatics-owned company was coming back to the league in full force, but NBA cards were not very popular in those days. Their original vintage era was before my time, and they didn't come back to the hobby until I was starting to bow out during their comeback season of 1992-93. Everything that's come out out since then has been a bit of a curiosity to me and nothing more as I didn't collect at all from 1994-on until I started the blog around 2008, at which time Topps NBA cards were once again on their way out. Since Fanatics apparently couldn't help themselves and wait until Panini's clock ran out, there were actually unlicensed NBA sets going back at least a couple of years prior to this past season, and they looked... well... terrible!
Here's a look at a card from the 2024-25 season. Instead of merely Photoshopping out the licensed markings, they decided to move the player's jersey number up and embiggen it to make it the central focus. It just looks weird, and all of the various flourishes they added to the design and their various parallels did not help in any way.
I'm actually here to talk about the fully licensed sets, however. For the flagship 2025-26 set, they copied the baseball design. I don't actually have a regular (non-parallel) base card scanned at the moment, so try to imagine Deandre Ayton's card at the top of the post has the expected solid white borders and such. The real travesty here is, well, two-fold:
1. Aside from rookies with their expected photo day/draft day poses, the player photo selection typically dates back to the beginning of the 2024-25 season, about a full calendar year before these hit the streets on October 23 of last year. Topps refused to do the Panini thing (update the team logo, but use an old photo and indicate the date the player changed teams) and also refused to do the, uh, Topps thing and just Photoshop the player into his new uniform. This third option seems like the laziest and worst. (Ayton spent this season with the Lakers.)
2. The backs of the cards have been Panini-fied in that there's just a single line of previous season stats along with career totals. Market research must have indicated that basketball fans don't care about stats. This is also the first release that I'm aware of that actually carries the "Flagship" branding on the back instead of Series One or something similar. Strangely, cards that have a vertical/portrait-oriented photo on the front have the same sort of orientation on the back, while horizontal/landscape-oriented fronts come with a horizontal/landscape back. I don't really understand the justification for this, and I'm sure it annoys the heck out of anyone trying to build these sets.
Topps also released a Holiday version of this set a week later, complete with similar design and parallel concepts that the MLB set used, only with no updates to player photos or teams.
Topps dropped their third NBA product of the year around Christmas time in Topps Chrome. I was able to afford precisely one hanger box, and only because I had a coupon at GameStop. These things were very expensive. You might expect some updated photos/teams here like they do with baseball, but you'd sadly be wrong. Here's a Prism parallel of that same Ayton guy from 2024. Different photo, but same old team.
On April 22nd, Topps released their first licensed Bowman basketball set to feature pro players in quite some time. This set also included a select group of college players on NIL deals as the "prospects" portion of the set. Similar to the baseball sets of the past, there are Chrome parallels to collect. Topps also screwed up the Blazers logo for certain players. Check out how dark this looks in comparison to Shaedon Sharpe's card below:
Strangely, I noticed they actually fixed the "dark logo" issue with these cards in their digital app (NBA Collect), which is about as close as you'll see to Topps acknowledging any errors these days.
No stats, but you do get a "Bowman Briefing". It probably goes without saying at this point, but there were no updated player teams or photos in this set as far as I can tell. Both Henderson and Sharpe are still with the Blazers at this time, though.
Fast forward to May 14th of this year and you'll see the first Topps-branded release of NBA Hoops. I was actually pleasantly surprised in a way with this release as the cards are more substantial looking than most past Hoops releases. They are thick and shiny as a sort of "elevated" foilboard set. Unfortunately, well, there was zero effort made on the checklist as once again we are treated to 2024 player photos and teams.
The backs fit in well with previous Hoops releases.
On May 28th, with the league already very deep in its playoff schedule, Topps released the first licensed Signature Class set in retail formats. Again, they used 2024 photos. Simons spent last season with the Celtics before being shipped to Chicago at the trade deadline. I also don't have a scan of any of the base cards from this set, but just imagine this design minus the shiny boxy look as this is a Chrome style "Pandora" parallel. There would be no stats on the back.
Topps also put out a handful of hobby-exclusive releases during the past season-plus, including stuff like Chrome Cosmic, Finest, and Midnight, but these all similarly had a low effort vibe to them. There is a forthcoming Chrome Update set coming out in about a week which will finally feature some player movement over a year in the making, but a quick glance at the checklist shows a ton of overlap with the original Chrome set. It seems like the primary reason for putting this out in the wild is to feature Luke Doncic cards, who was apparently left out of the main set, as well as getting a second crop of the same rookie class into the mix.
Will this time-delayed, low effort vibe continue into the next season? Will this also be applied to their NFL sets? I think I know the answer to those questions already.
